‘It’s just not our money to keep’: Handheld console maker Panic is refunding US tariff fees to its customers

Panic has been able to share some really good news this week to its customers. Those who bought the handheld console and were charged extra for its tariffs will be getting a refund.

“There was a specific window of time this year where we charged tariffs to customers,” Panic co-founder Cabel Sasser explains in an email to Game Developer. “We tried absorbing the cost for a while, but that was financially difficult for a small company like ours. We made the tariff a very obvious and clearly labeled line item on checkout for any customer affected.”

The US tariffs had a devastating impact on all sorts of physical games from hardware like the Playdate to tabletop and board games. Costs on all sorts of products which were manufactured outside the US increased significantly. But some respite has been had for the companies that’ve managed to secure a tariff refund from the US government, including PC cooling company Arctic, and now Playdate.

“It’s just not our money to keep, and it felt really good to give it back,” Sasser says. “That’s an easy way to know you made the right decision.” But as with anything the US touches, it’s not exactly a painless process.

“Still, it took a lot of work for us to file all the paperwork to get the refund from the government,” Sasser adds. “It took work to build a little system to process the refund, and sometimes it felt like, wait, why are we seemingly doing more work than even gigantic companies are on this issue? That felt weird. But I guess it makes sense in a way, because our small size means we’re far more directly affected by something like a tariff.”

Oh, to be at the whims of an administration that acts first and thinks only when they’re legally forced to do so. It’s clear that Sasser would’ve rather spent time on literally anything else: “From start to finish on this whole tariff whim, all I could think about is all the cool stuff we could be working on instead.” But at least customers are getting some money back after the whole fiasco.